New York designers Studio Lindfors have created a series of images imagining how New York and Tokyo might look like in a few hundred years as a result of rising sea levels.
Called ‘Aqualta’, the project predicts that communities will adapt to the changes by building piers and navigable canals to replace the existing transport networks.
The series of images by Studio Lindfors depict rooftops used for growing food and oyster beds cultivated to protect the coasts.
Some text from the designers:
‘Studio Lindfors has released a new series of images called Aqualta – a play on Acqua Alta, the increasing high tides flooding Venice – which visually explores what a coastal metropolis might feel like a hundred years from now due to rising sea levels. The images illustrate two cultural and financial epicenters – Tokyo and New York – adapting to, rather than resisting, rising waters.
Aqualta imagines city dwellers migrating to higher and dryer elevations as water levels gradually increase. Piers, boardwalks and systems of navigable canals reestablish the transportation network lost below.
Residents repurpose rooftops for farms and greenhouses. Wetland ecologies and oyster beds thrive and take root to better protect coasts from future storms. The cities are shown without combustion – engines, power plants, all emissions are rendered obsolete – resulting in cleaner, quieter neighborhoods. Aqualta reveals an adaptable city infrastructure capable of acclimating to nature.
Studio Lindfors is a design firm based in New York City. The firm is versed in a wide range of project types and dedicated to the pursuit of speculative proposals that explore the realm of the fantastic. Current projects include a restaurant in Houston, a film studio in Brooklyn and illustrations for the House of Inconvenience.’
